[R] bug when subtracting decimals?

[John C Nash]

A quarter-century ago I was part of the IEEE 854 group that tried to 
suggest a
radix free arithmetic standard. One of the interests was decimal 
arithmetic. I actually
have owned 2 decimal arithmetic computers, a North Star Horizon (with 
decimal
hardware I had to build by hand from a kit) and a Radio Shack TRS80 
Model 100,
which used software BCD arithmetic. Interestingly, the same h/w for the 
TRS80 by
NEC used binary FP.

With the number of times the question of arithmetic coming up on this 
list, one wonders
if a decimal arithmetic version of R, or other software too, might not 
be worthwhile.
There are other issues that arise, of course, but binary floating point 
does upset folk
used to working in base 10, and the I/O conversions do make things look 
messy.

JN